Although a refrigerator is a convenient storage medium for storing contents such as foods and food ingredients for a long period of time, from the user's point of view, it is not easy to remember where food is stored in the refrigerator, when the food is stored, and what the food is stored in, and it is difficult to organize contents because there is no information about what someone else has stored. In addition, there was an inconvenience that to find out what kinds of foods are contained in plastic bags in a refrigerator, the plastic bags should be opened individually.
Meanwhile, in order to solve the above problems, in the document of Korean Patent No. 10-1237641, there has been disclosed a “Refrigerator having a date display store unit” (registered Feb. 20, 2013), in which a display device capable of entering and displaying a storage date for each storage space of a refrigerator. However, it is disadvantageous in that since the display device is provided in the refrigerator, a user must open a door every time to check it.
Further, in order to solve the above problem, in the document of Korean Utility Model Registration No. 20-0290777, there has been disclosed an “Apparatus for managing and displaying expiration date of things in refrigerator” (registered Sep. 17, 2002), in which items are identified through barcode input, and the expiration date is displayed and counted to generate an alarm sound. However, it is disadvantageous in that it is not easy to adopt the apparatus because a separate input means such as a barcode reader is required, and it does not provide information about what item has reached the expiration date and where the item is.